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Felipe Calderon Says Arizona Laws Breed Intolerance and Hate
 Ewen MacAskill - Guardian UK
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April 28, 2010
| | Mexican president Felipe Calderon: he will raise issue with Barack Obama next week. (Alfredo Estrella/AFP/Getty Images) | |
Arizona's tough new immigration law threatened to turn into an international dispute today when Mexico made clear its opposition to a move it said would breed discrimination and hate.
The Mexican president, Felipe Calderón, said the country would not stand idly by in the face of a policy that infringed basic human rights and promised to raise it with President Barack Obama during a visit to Washington next month.
The Mexican foreign ministry, long used to warnings from the US state department about the risks of travelling to Mexico because of drug wars, retaliated by issuing an alert to Mexicans and migrant communities because of the "adverse political atmosphere" in Arizona. To further signal its displeasure, Mexico cancelled a cross-border meeting planned with Arizona.
The furore over the new law continued to grow too inside the US, with Republican politicians in other states fearing illegal immigrants might move from Arizona to states with less draconian police powers. The politicians warned they might be forced to introduce similar legislation.
The new law has within days turned immigration into one of the hottest political issues in the US. It is also putting at risk the political careers of veterans such as John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential candidate. Calderón, speaking to immigrant groups in Mexico City on Monday, condemned the new law, saying: "Criminalising immigration, which is a social and economic phenomenon, this way opens the door to intolerance, hate, discrimination and abuse in law enforcement." He added: "My government cannot and will not remain indifferent when these kinds of policies go against human rights."
The Mexican foreign ministry, in its travel warning, said that until the situation became clear, "it should be assumed that any Mexican citizen could be bothered and questioned for no reason at any time".
The US has long turned a blind eye to illegal immigrants, in part because they fill many low-paid service industry jobs. There are millions of illegal immigrants in the US, mainly from Mexico and other parts of Latin America, with an estimated 450,000 in Arizona. The new law, which will allow police to stop anyone on grounds of "reasonable suspicion", is expected to come into effect in July or August.
The Mexican state of Sonora, for the first time in 50 years, cancelled its annual meeting with Arizona, scheduled for next month, in protest at the legislation.
The prospect of illegal immigrants heading for other states has created alarm, particularly in states either bordering Arizona or close by. A Republican state politician in Utah, Stephen Sandstrom, is drafting a bill that will give the police powers similar to Arizona's. He told the Salt Lake Tribune: "With Arizona making the first step in this direction, Utah needs to pass a similar law or we will see a huge influx of illegals. The real issue is just establishing a rule of law in our state."
The issue has become extremely emotional, with churches, trade unions, civil rights groups and others condemning the law. Roger Mahoney, the Catholic archbishop of Los Angeles, has compared the need to show proof of citizenship to "German Nazi and Russian Communist techniques whereby people are required to turn one another in to the authorities on any suspicion of documentation".
The issue led the Jon Stewart show yesterday, with the host mocking the idea that police in Arizona would somehow be colour-blind in their search for illegal immigrants.
Pressure is building up in favour of an economic boycott of Arizona. But the Republican governor of Arizona, Jan Brewer, who signed the bill into law on Friday, played down the risk at an election meeting on Monday night. She said the priority of businesses in Arizona was to know they were in a safe and secure environment. "I believe it's not going to have the kind of economic impact that some people think that it might," Brewer said.
The issue is proving awkward for McCain, who was already engaged in a tough Republican reselection battle in Arizona. The senator is being challenged by a conservative supported by the Tea Party movement, which sees McCain as soft on immigration. McCain angered conservatives in 2007 when he and the late Democratic senator Ted Kennedy introduced a joint bill to reform immigration law to give illegal migrants a route to citizenship.
Facing a serious challenge in the primary race, the new bill has left him so far unwilling to either condemn or support the new Arizona law. Instead, he has attempted to portray himself as tough on immigration in other ways, such as securing the border. He added that he opposed "discriminatory behaviour" by the police armed with their new powers and that, in conversation with police chiefs at the weekend, he had been assured they could implement it without racial profiling.
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